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Your target audience is the group of people who are your customers and clients – or who you want to be your customers and clients. When you’re talking about your target audience, most people are familiar with demographics. Demographics Demographics are the stats about your target audience, such as gender, age, race, location, education, marital status, and income. These are traits that many people share, but otherwise, those people could be very different. While demographics are important, there’s another set of data that helps determine your target audience. Psychographics Psychographics are much more specific to a person. They include a person’s set of values andRead More →

If you’ve never heard of guerrilla marketing, I’m not surprised. It’s one of those types of marketing that most businesses don’t even think about, but it can be very effective. Guerrilla Marketing Is… Guerrilla Marketing is sort of experimental marketing – it’s a way to share your message in a memorable, creative, low-cost way that has a big effect. Now, that might sound like “normal” marketing, but there’s a difference. Guerrilla marketing is usually one-off. It occurs for a limited time and can be found in usual places. For example… In the Bathroom A bar bathroom is not the place where you would expect to findRead More →

Facebook is a staple in a marketing strategy, and it’s an easy and inexpensive way to reach your audience. Pew Research Center shows that 71% of adults who are online use Facebook and 70% of those use Facebook daily. People spend 20% of mobile device time using Facebook, which equals 46 minutes a day. Bottom line: there’s a lot of people using Facebook and they check it a lot. The challenge here, of course, is that where there are people, there are businesses trying to vie for their attention, and much of what is seen in a person’s newsfeed depends on Facebook algorithm. That makes itRead More →

GIFs are those moving images – basically mini silent movies – that you’ve probably seen in your Facebook feed and wondered, “How did they do that?” Well, wonder no more, my friends! A Word of Caution GIFs look cool when used well, but are very annoying when used poorly (think animated ads that are too distracting). We’re going to focus on good uses of GIFs, which can really take your marketing to the next level. Please proceed with caution. GIFs Are Easy to Make I’ll be honest, for a long time I thought GIFs were hard to make and required mad Photoshop skills. I haveRead More →

Every business, no matter how small, can benefit from smart marketing. A friend of mine from high school (OK, kindergarten – we go waaay back) recently started a business providing face painting services – Facepaint Fun by Cara. While I know she’s talented – she’s always been a great artist – Saturday night was the first time I have seen her in action. And let me tell you, she did not disappoint. Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about ways Cara can market her business and help it grow, and with her permission, I’m sharing them with you here. While I’ve used examplesRead More →

Our ability to read is constantly evolving. It’s one of the things that our brain is not naturally wired to do, and something that we have to be taught. Yet, it is so essential to our everyday lives, it’s hard to believe that it’s not something that we naturally do. Reading has always been tied to technology. It wasn’t until a writing utensil and surface were made that we as a species were able to read and write. As technological advances were made to pens and pencils, parchment and paper, so did reading and writing. The printing press was truly innovative and changed our livesRead More →

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, my office was busy. We were scrambling to arrange services for a plane full of people who had survived the natural disaster. These were people who lost everything, and were being routed to Pittsburgh. Many of them would stay and start their lives over in the Steel City. Talk about pressure. My True Story About Working with Doers and Demanders At the time I was working in government-run human services, in the communications department. We were the planners – the ones who organized events – so this fell right into our laps. Our charge was to organize the WelcomeRead More →

We all know the typical stock photos – a group of business people sitting at a table and smiling at a document. Yup, totally realistic. But you need images to use in your marketing. Check out this list of 11 websites where you can get great photos for free, even for commercial use. But first… NEVER use images without permission. You cannot Google an image and use it on your website without getting permission from the owner. You can be SUED for doing this. I have seen this happen. It’s usually because people don’t understand the laws around using images, but that’s not an excuse. UsingRead More →

I received a cold email yesterday (the electronic version of a cold call). I don’t usually even look at these, but I went ahead and opened it. Let me repeat that: I don’t usually even look at these. Do you? When someone emails you and you have no connection to that person, do you even open it? Probably not. Yet, against my better judgement, I opened the email and here is what it said (minus identifying details): Hello again Dana, I reached out last week in the hope of introducing myself and (company), a company that helps schools get more enrollment, engagement and ROI from the web. IRead More →

Today is Groundhog’s Day, which may not be a big deal everywhere, but in Western Pennsylvania, it’s a Thing. I think most people associate Groundhog’s Day with the movie rather than Punxsutawney Phil. You know the one – where Bill Murray repeats Groundhog’s Day over and over and over again. There’s a marketing lesson here. Repetition is key to good marketing. A customer needs to be exposed to your message over and over and over again. This can be frustrating when you’re spending time and money on a marketing campaign and you’re just not seeing results, but stick with it. Results don’t happen overnight, justRead More →